About Us

Unparalleled Skill, Expertise & Experience

Meet Our Team

Rachel Schinosi, L.E

President,
Cosmetic Enhancement Specialist

Rachel Schinosi began her career in the cosmetic industry as a state-licensed medical esthetician and professional makeup artist. She delighted in helping her clients enhance their natural beauty with makeup, however, she wanted to provide her clients with a longer-lasting solution – color enhancement that would not wash off mere hours after leaving Rachel’s makeup…

Lori Sleva, L.E

Skincare Specialist

Lori Sleva is licensed by the Pennsylvania State Board of Cosmetology in Esthetics and Makeup Artistry. She has been servicing skincare clients at Cosmetic Solutions for the past three years. Prior to that, she worked for a local plastic surgeon performing the same treatments such as microdermabrasion and chemical peels. Lori pays close attention to each…

Heather Hunter, L.E.

Cosmetic Enhancement Specialist

Heather Hunter is a graduate of Washington and Jefferson College, where she obtained her Bachelors Degree. Heather is a certified Permanent Makeup Artist and specializes in the application of Eyebrows, Eyeliner and Lips. She is a Certified Laser Technician and is an expert on our i-Lipo and Ultra services. She is also licensed by the State Board of Cosmetology in…

Tammy Gaydos

Cosmetic Enhancement Specialist

Renee Glover

Office Manager

Why Our Program is Second to None

Cosmetic Solutions technicians constantly immerse themselves in training of the latest and most innovative procedures. Chosen and led by Cosmetic Solutions President and Cosmetic Enhancement Specialist, Rachel Schinosi, our staff has unparalleled skill and expertise. Rachel started her cosmetic career as a medical esthetician, licensed by the state, as well as a make-up artist. She now brings her years of experience to Cosmetic Solutions.

The Benefits of Cosmetic Solutions

We have over 20 years of experience

We have over 25,000 procedures worth of experience

Our focus is on beauty that lasts

Multiple packages are available to offer even more value for your cosmetic needs

As a new customer, you can get a free gift certificate to use on your first visit

More promotions are offered on a regular basis

Expert Staff with unparalleled expertise

Our Mission

Cosmetic Solutions has been helping people turn back the hands of time for well over 10 years. We are an aesthetic boutique that specializes in enhancing clients natural beauty through non-invasive treatments. We are dedicated to providing superior service by offering top-notch equipment and services, a safe environment and a friendly staff of talented technicians and artists.

We believe that our employees are happier and most productive when they have a healthy balance between work and home life. Family is an integral piece of our company and we support a family first environment.

We practice non surgical procedures so that you are left with little or no discomfort at all. The best part is that we can perform these procedures in a short time (typically in less than an hour) so that you can carry on with the rest of your busy life.

Investing in your appearance will prove to enhance your confidence, mindset and overall happiness. We at Cosmetic Solutions want to help you with this critical investment through education and personalized care.

In The Press

FACE FIRST – RACHEL SCHINOSI OF COSMETIC SOLUTIONS(As seen in Whirl Magazine)

BY KATIE GREEN | PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAYLA ZAHORAN

For Rachel Schinosi, cosmetic enhancement specialist and owner of non-surgical aesthetic boutique Cosmetic Solutions, great style starts with putting her best face forward. At work, she wears scrubs, so she makes sure that her hair and makeup are always top notch. “People look at me when they come in here for different procedures, they are looking right at my face and checking out my makeup, so no matter what, my makeup is done,” she says. And, for that reason, she’s more apt to shell out extra dough on skincare products and makeup than she is on a pair of jeans — her True Religion jeans are from T.J. Maxx. “You’re in your face forever,” she says. “That purse is only going to last so long.”

Now She’s Picture Perfect – Rachel Schinosi of Cosmetic Solutions

(The Beaver County Times)

Patti Conley | Times Staff

It’s a late Tuesday morning. Cindy Zurchin of Economy lies on a facial bed in the treatment room at the Permanent Makeup Centre in Robinson Township.

Her 6-year-old son, John Robert, counts to 20 in Spanish as he tiptoes at the bed’s top edge for a close-up look at his mom’s face and to inspect the bright light permanent makeup artist Rachel Yakubik-Schinosi has turned on.

This morning, Schinosi will inject a black pigment along Zurchin’s lower eyelids and, with what looks like a gold and black fountain pen, meticulously draw a thin permanent line along the bottom edge of her eyes. When Schinosi is finished, Zurchin will have permanent eyeliner tattooed on both eyes.

First, they must wait five minutes until the white numbing cream Schinosi has spread on Zurchin’s eyelids and around her eyes has time to work.

Zurchin asks John Robert to sit quietly on a nearby chair. Schinosi asks Zurchin if she’d prefer a black or dark brown pigment.

Black, Zurchin says, and she’d like the eyeliner to look natural, not dramatic.

A week earlier Schinosi tattooed two cocoa-colored eyebrows along Zurchin’s natural brow line. The eyebrows were her Mother’s Day gift from her husband, John, and her two sons, John Robert and Nicky, 3.

The eyeliner is a gift to herself.

“I consider it a present for the past 25 years,” Zurchin says.

It was April 21, 1981. Cindy Lott’s life was picture perfect.

She was 17, a senior at Shaler Area High School, a petite brown-eyed brunette who modeled and danced and drove a newly restored 1972 lime-colored convertible Ford Mustang to school that morning.

Time that Tuesday afternoon split into seconds she didn’t remember then, and doesn’t now. Newspaper stories and family told her what happened.

A car speeding over the crest of a hill smashed into the rear of the Mustang. Upon impact, the convert- ible veered into an oncoming pickup. Its gasoline tank exploded and caught on fire as Lott was thrown through the flexible roof and onto the road 30 feet from the fiery wreckage.

A Frito-Lay delivery truck driver who had stopped at the accident scene ran to Lott’s side and with an extinguisher sprayed the fire searing her hands and face.

Witnesses wondered whether she’d live.

Cindy Lott Zurchin is 41, a principal on special assignment for Pittsburgh Public Schools, owner of a dancing school in Ross Township and a petite dynamo who was nicknamed “Wonder Woman” 24 springs ago.

Nurses at West Penn Hospital’s burn unit gave Cindy Lott that name during her month-long stay at the Pittsburgh hospital because of the teenager’s tenacity.

In the fiery accident, she suffered a puncture wound in her head, a damaged left lung, and serious burns that blistered and scarred her hands and her face from forehead to neck and from ear to ear. Would she be able to see?

Doctors removed both burnt earlobes, and within two weeks her vision returned. When nurses held a mirror to her face, she cried, yet she knew worry wouldn’t help.

That June, Lott attended her high school graduation ceremony. She wore white – a white cap, a white gown and white bandages around her forehead, neck and hands.

That fall, she enrolled at Duquesne University. In time she’d go on to earn bachelor, master’s and doctoral degrees in education.

By 1986, through seven or eight surgeries, doctors pulled the damaged skin on her face and hands tighter and tighter so her scars thinned like a firm plastic wrap.

Zurchin teases. “I’ll never need a face-lift in my life.” Most thankfully, she says she now looks pretty much as she did in her high school graduation photograph, only older. She wears bangs to cover what’s left of the faded scar on her forehead.

Except for her left eye. The skin on her eyelid looks as if it’s darkened with a translucent bruise, and her left eyebrow ended midway at its arch. Every morning, Zurchin drew a finished brow with an eyebrow pencil, aiming to match the left to the right. Her aim was hardly perfect.

“Some days, I’d go a week with one eyebrow,” she said. Months ago, she read an advertisement about permanent makeup. A plastic surgeon referred her to Schinosi.

Three days after Mother’s Day, Schinosi gave her eyebrows and tattooed a small test patch area of her eyelid its natural flesh color.

“I loved them to death. I felt like I wanted to kiss Rachel,” an elated Zurchin says.

Schinosi works her magic with a little machine that looks like an electric train control box with an attached fountain pen. It hums like the box, too.

Zurchin, dressed in a jewel-accented ecru pantsuit fit for a wedding, rests on the bed as if she were tanning on a beach with a Jimmy Buffett song as background.

Her eyes are open. Schinosi hovers close to her face, the fingers of one hand holding the bottom eyelid and the other hand’s fingers guiding the needle-pen in tiny, gentle strokes just below the eyelash. The pen spits a black pigment.

The thought of a group of needles pumping pigment into skin so near the eye would make most anyone cringe. Zurchin says it feels as if she’s having a massage. She’s scared, though, to blink and doesn’t until Schinosi pulls the pen away.

Schinosi wipes away any excess pigment that surfaces and tells Zurchin that the eyeliner will look dark at first, then soften. In a week’s time, the pigment will fade about 40 percent to its permanent shade.

Within five minutes, Schinosi finishes Zurchin’s right eyelid and in another five, the left. Throughout she applies more cream to keep the area numb, and does so again just before she begins work on the eyelid scar.

Schinosi dips a needle into a flesh-tone pigment, holds the skin and patiently paints the flesh tone into the scar. As Schinosi works, tiny speckles of blood surface into the pigment and the scar area reddens and swells some.

Zurchin will need several more treatments to match the scar to the skin color. The scar cover-up tattoo is a gift from Schinosi to Zurchin, a gift not expected.

Schinosi holds a magnifying mirror up to Zurchin’s face.

At first look in the mirror, Zurchin smiles from ear to ear.

It is a smile that says thank you.

PERMANENT MAKEUP TIPS

Should you or shouldn’t you opt for permanent makeup?

Dr. James J. Barber, a plastic surgeon in Edgeworth, and permanent makeup artists Terri Piper, owner of Faces of the Future by Terri in New Brighton, and Rachel Yakubik-Schinosi, owner of the Permanent Makeup Centre in Robinson Township offer these tips:

Go conservative. Choose a thin eyeliner or a more natural lip color. More color or more liner can be added. Tattoo removal, Barber said, is difficult.

How long is forever? That depends on skin type, exposure to the sun and how well the client takes care of the permanent makeup. In the first week about 40 percent of the pigment fades, Schinosi said. Touch-ups may be done weeks later, and may be required every several years. Schinosi has had lower eyeliner for six years with no touch-ups. Her eyebrows have been touched up twice in the same time period.

Ouch! Does it hurt? Not like you’d imagine on the eyes and the eyebrows, Piper said. Clients described the pen’s pulsating needles as a tickle, a pinch or a pin prick. Before and throughout the procedure a topical numbing cream is applied. The mouth is more sensitive, so a physician or dentist may administer a nerve block. The tattooed eye area may redden and swell, and the eyes may water during the procedure. This discomfort is relieved by applying ice and usually is gone within hours, they said.

How much does it cost? Costs vary according to procedure and among technicians. Upper and lower eyeliner or eyebrows may range from $300 to $400 and lips anywhere from $300 to $600. Permanent makeup isn’t ordinarily covered by medical insurance.

Who’s having it done? Women of all ages, Barber said. Most of their clients are over 40, Schinosi and Piper said. Schinosi estimates that about 75 percent of her clients have the procedure to look better and the remaining 25 percent because of burns, scars or for medical reasons such as chemotherapy or alopecia.

(The Almanac)

Luke Campbell | The Almanac

After being hired to assist with medical skin treatments for a plastic surgeon to help those with surgical scars or a cleft lip, Rachel Schinosi often would show patients how to properly put on makeup, only for them not to be able to duplicate it.

Schinosi, now 39 and living in South Fayette Township, wanted to be the one who ended – or at least shortened – the rigmarole of eye shadow, eye liner, lip stick, lip gloss, concealer and foundation.

To help trim the daily task of completing the methodology behind makeup, she began learning about permanent makeup, cutting that “get-ready” time to a matter of a few minutes.

Opening Cosmetic Solutions in Robinson in 2001 and later moving to Southpointe Square on Morganza Road in Cecil Township, Schinosi has tattooed more than 10,000 eyebrows and eyelashes, and eclipsed the 5,000 mark of lip colorings for her various clients.

From assisting women who want to avoid the day-to-day hassle to aiding women with multiple sclerosis or macular degeneration, one group of patients Schinosi serves hits close to home. About 20 percent of those patients are coming to her to help with places hair will soon be gone or has already departed in order to finish their fight with cancer.

“My grandmother and grandfather both died from cancer,” Schinosi said. “It definitely stays with me.”

After numbing the skin, Schinosi takes digital equipment of disposable pigment and needles to work on the three most important parts on the face – the eyes, eyebrows and lips – for approximately 15 to 30 minutes for each section. The cosmetic tattoos, which can be filled in while doing lip color or through needle-tipped strands almost identically resembling hair, are underneath the skin rather than placed on top like regular makeup. That one session where the tattooing is applied typically lasts between one or two years before being touched up again.

As Kathy Blass of Wheeling, W.Va., walked in for her appointment – a breast cancer survivor after being diagnosed in 2003 – it is just another reminder to both of them the impact it has on those battling the illness.

“It would have made a significant difference had I known about something like Cosmetic Solutions before losing my hair,” said Blass, who founded and is president of Ohio Valley Breast Awareness Inc.

“It would allow you, through one of your toughest times, to keep your dignity as a woman. It’s a great option for women to have and know about. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a great opportunity.”

After a mastectomy, Blass underwent six months of chemotherapy to rid her body of any cancerous cells to now be able to help those going through the same struggles she faced 14 years ago.

“It’s humbling,” Blass said about fundraising efforts for robes and camisoles that are distributed to those fighting breast cancer. “It’s about not adding what they have to wear to the list of their worries.”

For Schinosi, it’s just about getting the message out about those opportunities before patients lose their hair to chemo and radiation treatments.

“I don’t think a lot of women who are going to go through chemotherapy know that it’s even an option for them,” Schinosi said. “A lot of the time I get them after that experience when their eyebrows and eyelashes don’t come back. If these tattoos can be put on before they lose their hair, they can still feel pretty. The biggest thing we hear is people don’t think it would be as easy as it was. When you leave here it’s going to look a lot more dramatic but it’s more subtle when it heals and fades out after about seven days. The nice thing is if you are going for that natural look it is a total replacement but there is no harm in throwing other stuff over top of it.”

According to Schinosi, her business is the lone one in the area to put nearly all of its efforts into permanent makeup. Being in the permanent makeup business for 17 years also has her as one of the longest tenured people doing the work in the entire country.

“I just want everybody to feel good about themselves,” she said. “That’s something each person should have no matter what they are going through.”